excuse for you. When my hatred was bitterest, I
knew somehow, at the back of my mind--for I only allowed myself to think
of it occasionally--that you acted from--there is but one word--jealousy
(not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked
you, as a man and as a priest, to find that the woman whom you thought
so much of, and whose society gave you so much pleasure (I know the
times we passed together were as pleasant to you as they were to me),
should suddenly without warning appear in a totally different light, and
in a light which must have seemed to you mean and sordid. The discovery
that I was going to have a baby threw me suddenly down from the pedestal
on which you had placed me; your idol was broken, and your feelings--for
you are one of those men who feel deeply--got the better of you, and you
indulged in a few incautious words in your church.

'I thought of these things sometimes, not often, I admit, in the little
London lodging where I lived till my baby was born, seeing my gown in
front getting shorter, and telling lies to good Mrs. Dent about the
husband whom I said was abroad, whom I was expecting to return. That was
a miserable time, but we won't talk of it any more. When Father O'Grady
showed me the letter that you wrote him, I forgave you in a way. A woman
forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by
jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is
not a little jealous. His jealousy may prove inconvenient, and she may
learn to hate it and think it an ugly thing and a crooked thing, but,
from her point of view, love would not be complete without it.

'I smiled, of course, when I got your letter telling me that you had
been to your sisters to ask them if they would take me as a
schoolmistress in the convent, and I walked about smiling, thinking of
your long innocent drive round the lake. I can see it all, dear man that
you are, thinking you could settle everything, and that I would return
to Ireland to teach barefooted little children their Catechism and their
A, B, C. How often has the phrase been used in our letters! It was a
pretty idea of yours to go to your sisters; you did not know then that
you cared for me--you only thought of atonement. I suppose we must
always be deceived. Mr. Poole says self-deception is the very law of
life. We live enveloped in self-deception as in a film; now and again
the film breaks like a cloud and the l